Wild & woolly Ouagadougou

Ouagadougou. Pronounced waga-doo-goo, it is shortened to Ouaga for the initiated. As a name, it must rank among the most mellifluously conceived on the planet, up there with Timbuktu and Beaverton. It is, simply, fun to say. Ouagadougou. Where are you going? Ouagadougou. You contracted dysentery where? Ouagadougou.

As a city, Ouaga occupies a stretch of dusty plain on the central African plateau not too far from absolute nowhere. Already the first breath of the harmattan, the annual West African trade wind from the Sahara, has arrived. Many of the streets are either dirt or so covered with dust as to seem dirt, and this is forever being stirred in the air like an upturned snow globe. We take to calling it Ouagadusty.

Though employing a Los Angeles-like city planning approach, the center of town is surprisingly compact and easy to navigate. It revolves around the Grand Marche, a big block building that once housed the main market until it was gutted by fire in 2003 and is, like so much in the city, left to decay in its own good time.

Bicycles and motorcycles command the streets here, unlike in Ghana, where until one gets to the north you only rarely encounter a two-wheeler. Crossing the street at the busy Place des Nations Unies circle in Ouaga is a challenge and may be enough to have your health insurance suspended. How the vendors selling phone cards and napkins work the passing vehicles is a wonder on the order of those levitating Indian yogis.

Of the city generally there is a sort of derelict air. Everything is worn and weathered. It seems barely sustaining itself against the sun, the ravages of the dust and the general disinterest of its military dictatorship. As many of the 1 million population came from simple villages one questions if the city returning to a more primitive condition is not a perfectly acceptable outcome to them.

The sections that appear to have made the greatest attempt at modernity seem the roughest. Passing the old Palais de Justice, desks and chairs, as if tossed from the windows, lie here and there in the yard amid other debris and garbage. A man sleeps on a piece of discarded planking at the top of the steps.

But somehow the presence of French on signs and billboards adds a soupcon of character that cancels out some of the other. I can’t identify what it is exactly, but despite the general state of disrepair, the dust and monumental heat, I like Ouaga. But maybe it’s just the name.

(Picture: The Grand Mosquee in the central district of Ouaga)

Ghislain & the bishop

Our first mission once in Burkina Faso is to get to, of all places, the Ghanaian Embassy. Jeanne needs to secure a new visa for our return in a few days’ time. The rest of us have multiple-entry Ghanaian visas and can come and go as we damn well please.

Being at the embassy is unexpectedly comforting after the journey from the border. It is especially welcome after the taxi ride from the Ouaga station, which finds all five us and our bags crammed into without question the most battered, most beat up, ricketiest, most run-down car in all of Africa. The inside of the doors is just exposed rusting metal. The floor is all uncovered frame. What is left of the dash is largely collapsed and covered in dust. To get going a few of the driver’s friends have to push us down the road a piece before the engine catches.

Learning that the Ghanaian Embassy does not in fact take Ghanaian cedis, and none of us yet has ceefah (having dismissed the enthusiastic moneychangers at the border), Maria and I agree to go find a bank. We take everyone’s leftover Ghanaian cedis to exchange.

We soon find a bank, but learn to our surprise that despite being neighbors, Burkina wants nothing to do with our cedis. No one, it turns out, will take them. Luckily, they do accept U.S. dollars, which we change for Alice. And it does have an ATM that accepts VISA, so Shawn and I can get cash. But the others are, for the time being, ceefah-less.

Returning to the embassy, we find that our group has grown by one. Ghislain Kabore is a dark, handsome Burkinabé of about 30 with more than a passing resemblance to the actor Don Cheadle. He is the nephew of the bishop to whom Alice’s family has a connection. It is unclear how he got tasked with being our welcoming party, but by the time Maria and I return he has already been instructed to deliver us to good coffee.

Our first stop, however, is our hotel, which Ghislain has taken the liberty of arranging for us.

“This is nicer,” he says matter-of-factly, explaining why he doesn’t take us to the place we’d pointed to in our guidebook.

Stuffed into his car, he drives us down a bumpy side road in the eastern part of the city and then through a wide gate. Scattered around the large, quiet compound of sun-baked scrub grass sits an arrangement of low, concrete buildings. Called the Centre Polivalent, it was established by a local cardinal, Paul Zoungrana, and is operated by a group of resident nuns. It is small oasis hidden from the dusty chaos of the streets outside.

The rooms themselves are quite nice. They are very clean and equipped with two single beds with mosquito nets (the cardinal wanted, apparently, to discourage any shared-bed hijinks), a fan and air conditioning. The bathroom is also clean, with a nice overhead shower.

Admittedly of a miserly turn of mind, I’m still surprised at the price, about US$34. Isn’t this Burkina Faso, the third poorest nation on earth? If I can’t get a steal of a room here, where in the Ouagadougou can I?

Once we’re comfortably set up, Ghislain makes good on his promise and drives us back to the city center to a French-run patisserie. Even using the word “patisserie” has us swooning in anticipation. And Patisserie de Koloubo south of the Grand Mosquee doesn’t disappoint. We gorge ourselves on fresh pastries, baguette sandwiches and the richest, creamiest café au lait this side of Montmartre.

Full and fueled we return to meet the bishop, who is also staying at the hotel. He turns out to be a quiet, impressive man in dark-rimmed glasses and white vestments. He has about him the gravitas and bearing that I imagine coming in handy mediating some African election gone wrong or writing a line of self-help books.

Ghislain, for his part, does not strike me as the devout type. Dressed in a crisp, white shirt and black slacks, and sporting the air of someone with some money in a culture with little, there is clearly more to him than meets the eye. And then, almost on cue, he leans over to me and whispers in my ear, “I would like to take some beer.”

When I start to respond enthusiastically, greatly preferring this plan to the card game now being discussed between the girls and the bishop, he coolly turns his back to his uncle and puts a finger to his lips. “Shh.”

(Picture: Me and Ghislain)

Bye bye safe journey, part 5

Despite Lumumba, the trip from Paga to Ouaga manages still to be very interesting. This is flat, hot, dry country. Aside from the small clusters of simple conical huts that are traditional in this region, it is home only to spindly shrubs and hearty, brittle-looking trees. At intervals, dusty paths lead off into the bush. I wonder who takes them and where they lead.

Since crossing the border, vendors don’t approach our bus here when we stop. Few people seem to be about at all. Even the highway is largely empty and we go long minutes without seeing another vehicle that is not pulled by a donkey.

We pass a number of marshy areas dotted beautifully with white lilies across the surface. We peel our eyes for hippos but see only a man pulling in his fishing net. On the shore, his wife collects a pile of charcoal while a couple of naked kids entertain themselves on the small, muddy beach.

Later, passing through the town of Kombisiri, I see a group of boys playing on not one, not two, but three foosball tables. It seems a mirage or perhaps I now have some brain-stewing fever. No wood in the buildings, but foosball tables? Then I see another table some miles farther. I can’t even imagine how they find their way here.

Lumumba said nothing more during the trip. He took no notice of us at all. As Ouaga finally looms in the distance like a worn and dusty Oz, I think again about how to handle the ambush he’s surely organized for us. But then, about 10 minutes before the station, he all of sudden has the driver stop and let him off. We don’t see him again.

(Picture: A shot of the main Ouagadougou bus station)

Bye bye safe journey, part 4

Lumumba is a young man, in his mid-20s. He wears aviator sunglasses, a Quicksilver baseball cap, baggy jeans and flip flops; he wouldn’t be out of place hanging out in the parking lot of some high school. At first, he seems to take no notice of us.

We’re on the road about 15 minutes when he calmly ventures back, wearing his salesman’s smile. He even removes his sunglasses. I expect him to ask what happened, why we decided to abandon the taxi. But he doesn’t, and the fact that he doesn’t only fuels my suspicions about him.

“Nice tactical move, obroni,” I imagine him thinking. “But rook takes castle, I’m afraid. Here I am. Your move.”

Instead of asking about our abrupt change in plans, he says, “Your friend, the one with the motorcycle, they said he didn’t have the proper paperwork so they wouldn’t let him cross the border. But I helped him. I led him to the place to get the papers.”

“Oh … OK,” we say.

He stands in the aisle, a hand on the back of the seat on either side, and nods confidently, as if everything is falling nicely into place. There is a long moment of awkward silence. When he doesn’t return to his seat, Jeanne speaks up, “I’m sorry, but we just want to be left alone. We don’t want to talk.”

Fire, meet tinder. In an instant, his mood changes. He stiffens and his face goes hard.

“Who are you?” he demands. “You are no one. You cannot speak for everyone. Who are you? Did you ask the others what they think? That is rude. I was talking to Mr. Greg. I don’t care what you think. Who are you anyway? You come to my country and be rude? You can’t come here and act that way. Why don’t you leave?”

There is a pause. He is waiting for an answer, but we remain silent, as do the rest of the passengers. This seems to anger him further.

“You think you are so important because you travel to all these countries. I have traveled. I have been to many different places outside. Just like you. So you are not special. I am as good as you.”

Still no response. So he picks up steam, adding new energy and new historical dimensions to his tirade.

“You come here and treat people like that. You are racist. You are a racist. This is my country. Not yours. Why don’t you go? Get out. You are racist. You come to Africa and you steal all of our resources. You come and take and take. Because you are white you think you can take whatever you want around the world. That is why we are poor here. You enslave our people. You don’t think we remember but we remember. We will never forget. Now you try to put chains on our minds but you cannot. We won’t let you. We are strong. We are just waiting. Now you have a black man as president. In the Black House. We are just waiting. And then we are going to rise up. We are going to control you to the max. Who cares about you?”

By this point, he seems to have finally talked himself out. A few more words sputter free, but without a response from us he soon seems to have lost interest. It is a startling rant, but revealing about a guy about whom we all had misgivings. Can a person embrace notions of the kind he just spouted, calling himself Lumumba, while also being truly the chummy, glad-handing helper he set himself up to be? Seems unlikely.

He finally resumes his seat and no more is said on the subject of plundered resources or chained minds. For the three hours to Ouaga I do, however, imagine scenarios in which we will greeted at the bus station by his friends. I try to prepare for the inevitable dust-up.

(Picture: Scene from a typical village in northern Ghana/Burkina Faso)

Bye bye safe journey, part 3

Before the taxi driver can reach us, one of the officers from the border station pulls up beside us on a scooter that is comically too small for him. He wants to ensure that we know where to go for the bus. It helps having French speakers in our group; it really helps having women French speakers.

The taxi driver, who surely had planned to treat us to a string of angrily delivered French epithets, which admittedly still sound more beautiful than, say, German epithets, chooses instead to gun his engine and tear by us, kicking up dust. Somehow his response confirms his nefarious intentions. He’s lost our fares and the money he’d make selling our limbs to local fetish priests.

Either appointed by the officer or just self-appointed in hopes of some commission, another man appears who leads us to the bus. We are walking briskly, keeping our eyes out for the car, which has now disappeared. The bus, it turns out, is the 7:30 a.m. bus to Ouaga. This is tremendously good news. We thank the officer who putters away on his scooter.

In another 100 yards, we’re on board the bus. Safe! The bus driver greets us warmly as if he’d been waiting the whole time for us to arrive. “Sit where you wish,” he says. We exhale, smile and find seats. Never has a bus been more welcome.

We’re busy congratulating ourselves when the white Peugeot screeches to a stop next to the bus. In seconds a yelling match ensues between the driver outside and the bus driver and a few people on the bus. It turns into a chaos of shouting and enthusiastic gesturing. As it’s all being conducted in some local language, we simply stand dumbly, watching.

“But we had a deal!” I imagine the taxi driver yelling. “Now who am I going to drive an hour out of town, empty of their valuables and then dump on the side of the road? I had my whole morning planned!”

Finally, amid all the yelling, the man who led us to the bus says, in English, “No, the police officer sent them here!” Almost instantly, the arguing stops. This important detail appears to have sealed the deal. There is still grumbling and the occasional interjection from the driver outside, but the tone has changed.

In another few moments, the atmosphere on the bus has returned to normal. Passengers who got involved in the back and forth turn from the window and take up their seats. And then much to our joy we see the taxi driver slam the door of his car and speed off.

And then I catch a glimpse of the front of the bus.

“Oh crap,” I say.

“What?” the others say.

“There’s Lumumba.”

And there he is, having appeared at some point in the confusion to take a seat a few rows back of the driver. And is that the other man from the taxi? The one in the black shirt?

(Picture: A little premature, but this is across the street from the entrance to our hotel in Ouagadougou.)

Bye bye safe journey, part 2

The Burkina Faso border office makes the Ghanaian effort seem like the finely appointed, well-oiled working of a Swiss bank. Take the two border agents from their broken-down desks and you wouldn’t be crazy to have dismissed the entire place as abandoned.

In one dark corner sits a couple of mothballed fans, a discarded bicycle, a dust-covered scooter. On the walls of chipping plaster peels an old Burkina Faso tourism poster. It looks so old I wonder that it doesn’t bear the country’s former name, Upper Volta.

The man who first takes our passports is wearing green, military-issue pants, flip flops and a soiled white tank top. He scribbles something in a large, weathered ledger. We then move to a position before the second man. A taciturn older gentlemen in a disheveled uniform, sunglasses and a black beret, he’s straight from central casting: This is an African border agent. As if to seal the deal, once he’s completed stamping our passports he lights a cigarette and leans back in his creaky chair.

Just then the tall American enters, nods coolly at us and takes a seat. He is wearing a motorcycle jacket and carrying a helmet. Perfect, I think.

During the 20 minutes or so it has taken us to go through the process, we’ve discussed our waiting transportation and decided that we will break our arrangement with the bush taxi. Something about it just doesn’t feel right.

Jeanne and Maria, both French speakers (we’re out of the realm of English now), explain the situation to a couple of the uniformed guys lounging in the shade in front of the office. They point out the car on the off chance that the men might recognize the driver or Lumumba from some recent Interpol warning. We ask if there is a bus. The men point in the direction of the station a few hundred feet down the road.

We decide that I will give the bush taxi driver 2,000 ceefah (about US$4) for his trouble and then we will make a beeline for the bus station. Lumumba had earlier assured me that the morning bus for Ouaga had already gone and that the next one didn’t leave until noon. But it seemed worth a try.

“This is going to be ugly,” I say, thinking of the response we’re likely to get from the driver after all our earlier negotiations. “He is not going to be happy.”

“Nope,” Shawn says. “We just need to keep walking once we tell him. Just keep walking.”

We make a small huddle to focus our resolve. And then as if it had been our purpose all along we stride confidently toward the driver who, seeing us, moves to open the trunk of the car for our bags.

Once beside him, I say, “We’ve decided that we’re actually going to take the bus. But thank you very much.” I tuck the 2,000 bill in his shirt pocket.

He is totally and completely dumbstruck by this turn of events and stands frozen and speechless. This gives us the window we need in which to escape and we quickly start moving up the empty street toward the bus.

When after about 20 feet nothing has happened, I say, “Well, that was easy,” wiping my sweaty palms on my shorts.

But in another 30 feet, I hear his car engine kick into action. In another second, I hear him charging up the road toward us.

(Picture: A shot of roadside near the Burkina Faso border)

Bye bye safe journey, part 1

The Ghanaian border station is less a station than a place to sweat while the three bored-looking guards whack your passport. It’s not exactly a formal sort of process. Being issued a receipt at the grocery store has more emotional heft.

As we file through, another American joins the line behind us. He’s way too tall for anyone’s good and is either Southern or an arrogant ass. A short conversation reveals he is guilty of both. He affects an exasperated air like African border crossings are a chore, yes, but just a natural part of life for guys like him.

Outside the border station things get interesting almost immediately. The same moneychangers, who we put off 50 yards earlier, are waiting. They are apparently permitted to move freely back and forth as they please. Each one offers the exact same rate as the next and none seem the least bit inclined to haggle. Certain subtleties of free-market capitalism have not yet made it here. We thank them but pass again, sure we’ll get a better rate in Ouagadougou.

By this time another group of men has taken a great interest in our little group. These are the bush taxi drivers, and they want to drive us to Ouagadougou. How generous of them. Enter Lumumba. You may recognize the name as this overly nice, way-too-familiar and altogether shifty guy shares it with Patrice Lumumba, the African anti-colonial leader who helped the Republic of the Congo win independence from Belgium in 1960.

Lumumba is not a driver. He is, he explains with a wide, solicitous smile, going to Ouagadougou just like us. He is Ghanaian, he tells me, and makes frequent trips to Ouagadougou. For a reason I can’t discern, he insists on showing me his passport as proof of this fact.

“I have a friend who works in the Ghanaian embassy in Ouaga so if any of you need to get a new visa I can help you do that,” he says. As it happens, Jeanne needs to do precisely that, and I wonder if he had overheard us talking. It is strange, but undeniable truism that when away from home, a facility with English becomes a kind of red flag when toted out by a certain type of person.

“OK,” I say, trying to put him off. We’re in the middle of a complicated negotiation with one bush taxi driver and I feel like I should help. The problem is the car can comfortably fit seven people, but they want to fill the car with our five and three more, plus the driver, for a total of nine. We might as well travel inside our own backpacks.

The back and forth goes on for 20 minutes, attracting an audience of some 15 men, all of whom have something to say in the proceedings. This is a ragtag bunch for whom this scene must serve as a kind of theater.

Finally, we seem to agree that it will only be us, Lumumba and another man for a total of seven. We stow our bags in the trunk and climb in. We will first be driven the short distance to the Burkina Faso border station.

I notice that Lumumba has taken the front seat and that as we drive he is feverishly texting someone on his phone. I can’t help but wonder, of course, if he is alerting his colleagues that he has a few tasty white fish on the line.

(Picture: The road to the Burkina Faso border)

Making the crossing

We’re up with the sun. And the caterwauling of the roosters. And the complaining of the donkeys. Some of these sad, forlorn beasts we discover, with the benefit of light, live just behind our hut. They are common in the northern region, used to pull simple carts heaped with all manner of things. This is one of the many differences from the south, where the only place you could encounter a donkey is on your dinner plate.

Though none of us slept especially well, it having been much colder than we expected or were dressed for, it’s nice to be up early. From our rooftop we can look out over the broad expanse of land behind our hut. Everything is cast in a bluish morning glow as we watch a farmer and his family prepare for the day.

On the other side we see for the first time in the light of day the compound into which we wandered blind last night. It’s an unusual feeling to see a place for the first time 10 hours after arriving there. I’m pleased to find that it’s not as bad as I’d feared.

Sapotay and his family are already up as well. One daughter is sweeping the compound, another stoking the morning cooking fire. Sapotay and his sons, meanwhile, are collecting and displaying on a patch of ground everything they have that we could possibly be interested in buying. It’s a motley assortment of items. There are a few baskets, a couple of leather pouches, a wooden walking stick, some colorful things I can’t identify and a helmet decorated with bull horns. Unfortunately, none of it goes with what I’m wearing.

We thank him for his rooftop hospitality, especially the mattresses, which we learn were purloined from his children’s beds for our use. The light of day has revealed that Achala Village, the name of the place, does not see many visitors, or at least has not for some time. I wonder if each driver out of Bolgatanga “knows” a different guesthouse in Paga.

Moving to the road for the short walk to the border, we step over the blockade of sticks at the entrance to Sapotay’s place. This we’re told is intended to keep out any wandering crocodiles from the lake across the street.

By this early hour, perhaps 6:30, the street is already alive with people. A pair of men pedals by on bikes. A woman stares from her seat behind a clip-clopping donkey. A man steps from his house to wash his face from the bowl he is carrying. A naked child watches us pass, mouth hanging open in wonder, one hand covering her delicate bits.

As everywhere in Ghana, the looks an obroni is likely to get can seem severe: pinched brow, narrowed gaze. But this is only shock, surprise, wonder that here you walk, just feet away. A simple wave, hello or good morning and the face is instantly transformed by a broad, toothy smile and a warm returned greeting. I fear that an African visitor to an all-white neighborhood in the U.S. would not be so generously welcomed.

It takes only 20 mins to walk to the border. Amassed off the road to the right is a platoon of semi-trucks waiting to cross in the early morning. Goats wander the street. The moneychangers see us coming and in moments we have half a dozen men asking to change our Ghanaian cedis to Burkinabé ceefahs.

As the negotiations proceed, I see over their heads the border gateway sign into what is the third poorest country on the planet: It reads “Bye Bye Safe Journey.” It occurs to me that without the comma after “safe” the message is much less encouraging.

Arrive late, sleep on the roof, part 2

“Let’s go, let’s go,” the driver says with an unmistakable urgency.

Alice and Maria climb into the back seat just as one of the other drivers steps between Shawn and the open passenger seat in the front. He’s waving his hand and going on about “space by space.”

“We saw him first,” we say again.

“No, no, it’s space by space, space by space,” he insists, refusing to allow Shawn to sit.

“Let me sit down,” she says. “Please move. He won’t let me get in.”

“No, he only goes to Navrongo,” he says. “It goes space by space.”

There are at least half a dozen men now at the car, and our driver has become conspicuously quiet.

Another steps forward into the light made by the open car door. “He means that this man was not next in line. It is not his turn. It is for this man,” he says pointing to the car of the shouter.

The driver at this point, seeing his cherry picking effort has been bungled, gives in. Apparently good relations with his fellow drivers are more valuable than a car full of obronis. He starts to remove our bags from the trunk. “Go with this car,” he says, dejectedly.

The only problem is now it is fully dark, and this second car, which looks to have been fashioned out of discarded tuna tins, has no headlights. Agreed to ditching the first guy, we insist on a replacement. For their part, the men seem happy merely to have diverted us from the first man and a third car is whistled for.

As it turns out, our new driver is named Smiler. And it’s a fitting name. As we pull out of the station and join the pitch dark highway north to the border, his teeth work like a cab light. He knows a guesthouse in Paga, he says. And after a 30 minutes traveling through a landscape made nearly featureless by the night, we are dropped at a dark door.

“Wait,” he assures us, and disappears through the gate. By now it’s nearly 8 p.m. and we don’t much care how nice the place is. We’re ready to drop our bags and have some dinner, if any is to be had. The only visible lights are some distance down the road.

Smiler returns with Sapotay, the warm, toothless owner of the “guesthouse,” which as it turns out is really no more than a couple of huts for rent. After inspecting the empty, dusty interior of one with a flashlight (there is no electricity), and learning that the lake across the road is full of crocodiles that occasionally like to sniff out new visitors, we decide to, well, sleep on the roof. Of course.

(Picture: Alice, Maria, Jeanne and Shawn enjoying our luxurious rooftop digs in Paga for about US$5 per person)

Arrive late, sleep on the roof, part 1

It’s about three hours by tro tro from Tamale to Bolgatanga, the regional capital of the Upper East Region. We arrive at dusk, or perhaps it’s just the dust, which constantly roils above the ground in this dry, arid region like the orbit around Peanuts’ Pigpen. Some 20 hours closer to the Sahel now, sand that started in the distant Sahara is looking for a new home in our ears and eyes.

Our arrival in the station, as it does everywhere we go, creates something of a stir as we alight from the tro tro. A legion of taxi drivers immediately greets us with urgent appeals to take us wherever we want to go.

“The Four Seasons, please,” I say. This stalls them a minute. “OK, the Fifth Avenue Suites. But the one on the marina not the other one.”

“Where are you going?” the most enterprising of the group says, stepping forward. “You go to Navrongo?”

We explain that we’re not going to Navrongo, wherever the hell that is. We tell him we’re staying in Bolgatanga, but will heading out tomorrow for Burkina Faso. This piece of information ignites the men into a raucous round of auctioneering.

“You will miss the bus,” the one man says. “You should stay at the border.” He has large, protuberant eyes that give him the distinct impression of being incredibly interested in our situation.

“What do you mean we’ll miss the bus?” Jeanne asks.

“Yes, the bus to Burkina leaves at 7:30. You must wake at 5. You should stay in Paga. There is a guesthouse right on the border. Very nice. Come, I will take you.” Believing his case sufficiently made, he makes a confident move toward his car.

This early bus business is news to us as we had assumed there must be regular transport from Paga onward to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. We whisper among ourselves, a confused white bundle amid the mayhem of arriving and departing buses and tros and taxis.

“There is a hotel there?” I ask.

“Yes! Yes!” they all assure me.

The first man says, “Yes, you just walk from the guesthouse to the border and catch the bus. It’s no problem. Come.”

We take an accounting of each other’s feelings about pressing on to the border. We’ve all been in Ghana long enough to understand it’s something of a gamble. There may be plenty of buses. There may be no guesthouse. It may be less than nice. He may not be as interested as his eyes suggest.

“How far is it?” I ask.

“Thirty minutes, not far,” the man says. “Let’s go.”

After a couple of shared shrugs, we agree and follow the man to his car parked nearby. What seemed like the welcome conclusion to the conversation does in fact trigger a bona fide meltdown among the other drivers.

“We met him first,” we try to explain.

But the other drivers are seriously bent out of shape at these turn of events. They surround the man’s car, shouting as we place our bags in the trunk.

(Picture: Shawn on board our tro tro bound for Bolga)

We merry band of travelers

This trip north came about sort of accidentally, if eavesdropping can ever be considered accidental. Alice, a native of Kalamazoo, Mich., now calling Manhattan home, had a family connection to a bishop in Ouagadougou. (Let it be known now that I have already trademarked the title The Bishop in Ouagadougou for later use.) After keen surveillance, we learned that she was planning a journey north to see him. We figured she needed companionship.

As kind-hearted a clothing designer as you’re likely to meet, Alice immediately consented to the idea. Before long, two others joined the manifest, Jeanne, hailing originally from my mother’s hometown of Marblehead, Mass., but most recently of Ojai, Calif., and Maria from Barcelona.

All had in their separate spheres signed on to terms of varying lengths with Global Mamas. Alice has been instrumental in designing new garments for the organization, while resizing existing products to better suit the shapelier frame of the average American woman. Seeing her work, one wonders how they managed without her, and how they’ll fare once she leaves.

Jeanne arrived in Ghana after covering some 3,000 miles and passing through no fewer than 13 European countries on her bike. Having put her body to the test, she comes to Global Mamas to do the same for her experience as an operations manager at a fair-trade tea company. She has helped initiate an accounting system for the beadmakers in Odumase and is currently working on next year’s catalog. And she speaks French, which made her worth a juicy signing bonus on this trip to Francophone Burkina Faso.

Maria can also make with the oui oui talk, a skill which would play a critical role in a narrowly averted fracas at the Burkina Faso border. No stranger to the open road, she has lived around the world, including stops in Bangkok and Chicago. Her work at Global Mamas finds her helping organize and further the organization’s fair-trade certification program with its partner businesses. Best of all, she’s like a diamond mine of one liners: She’s not much of a gabber, but when she does talk it’s 24-carat hilarious.

The group formed as naturally as a carbuncle. Such is the beauty of traveling that one is afforded the exceedingly rare opportunity to join for a short time the life of a stranger, and then let them watch as you see how filthy, tired, frustrated and disagreeable you can get. Adventure is a sweaty business, and when you’re sharing it with the right people, as it was clear from the start that we were, it is a delight truly to be relished.

(Picture: Maria, Shawn, Alice and Jeanne on the road to the Burkinabé border)

Making shea butter, part 2

Long processed for its oil, which is still used as a key ingredient in local cooking and for various medicinal purposes, shea butter has in recent years become a sought-after ingredient for up-market soaps, lotions and cosmetics. The CMA started their project about 15 years ago in hopes of helping women find a piece of this expanding market.

“All of these women were trained by their parents to make shea butter,” Georgina says. “But because they had no money and no market, they would sit idle all day at home. That’s why we started this project.”

With a loan from a German NGO and additional assistance from the Japan International Coooperation Agency (JICA) (Japan's equivalent to the Peace Corps), they were able to construct the few necessary buildings and purchase the grinding and milling machinery. At the project’s two sites, nearly 50 women work in “trust teams” of five.

The CMA, which operates as a kind of business manager, keeps the books and ostensibly helps find markets for the products. Any profits go back to the women. From this they are expected to replenish the site’s stores of water, firewood and raw nuts. A small portion is also set aside for machinery maintenance.

“They share equally,” Georgina says. “The harder the group of five works, the more money they can make. But only when there’s a market.”

For a recent order of two tons, each of the three trust groups involved in fulfilling the order earned an average of about 28 cedis (about US$28), or a little more than US$5 per woman.

But today, despite a brief flirtation from the Body Shop, buyers have not materialized and Georgina admits that they are frustrated by a lack of knowledge about how to market the product or reach new customers.

“It has changed their lives,” Georgina says of the project. “They could not have two square meals before and now they can eat. But it’s not enough, not like we expected. Our objective is a total change for their lives.”

After saying goodbye, the women so appreciative that we took the time to visit, and we so appreciative that they permitted us to do so, they go back to work. We sit silently in the taxi on the way to the bus station, each of us lost in thoughts about possibilities.

(Picture: Some of the women mixing the ground shea nuts with water)

Making shea butter, part 1

The reason for our stop in Tamale, aside from breaking up the long journey to our northernmost destination of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, is to see the shea butter production process. Global Mamas has recently decided to offer the sought-after lotion and soap made from the shea nut, and the area around Tamale is one of only a few in the world where it is grown.

Georgina Adalibe of the Christian Mothers Association (CMA) meets us at the guesthouse and leads us a few miles out of town to the village of Vittim. We eventually leave the asphalt for a dirt road. After a few hundred yards, in a modest compound comprised of a few mud huts, a group of more than 20 women suspend their work to greet us with a song and a prayer.

It is an incredibly warm welcome, with much smiling and laughter. We shake their hands, which thanks to a lifetime working with shea butter are as smooth and soft as warm milk chocolate. Their faces manage in their manifold creases and wrinkles to resemble the nuts themselves. I am amazed yet again by how transformative a smile can be.

A spot in the shade is prepared for us and we are brought water, which passes for a cocktail in these parts. Georgina explains that the shea nut has been grown and harvested in this area for longer than she can remember. Virtually every family in the region knows its way around the small, dark nut.

For the next two hours we are given an up-close look at the laborious, time-consuming, hardly-seems-worth-it process. We count 12 discrete steps, from cracking open the nuts, to roasting and grinding them, to milling them and cooking down the result for the oil. The air fills with a smell that so resembles chocolate it’s hard not to toss a handful of the bitter nuts into your mouth.

When things are really moving, we are told they can product a ton a day. But I’m more staggered by the discovery of the process in the first place. Who first conceived that the nut was good for anything? And who was the consummately bored person who happened upon the Byzantine process for squeezing oil out of it?

(Picture: Alice, Shawn and Jeanne testing the shea nuts just out of the roaster)

Welcome to Nollywood

Ghana’s love of Nigerian-made movies may only be bested by its love of English soccer. It seems that the word “movie” has almost become synonymous with “Nigerian movie.” Finally, another nation is doing its part to clutter up video stores and local theaters with brain-deadening dreck.

On our recent bus ride from Accra to Tamale, a marathon bump-a-long of some 13 hours, included, for our traveling pleasure, not fewer than four examples of Nigeria’s finest. By the final hour, I’d become convinced that certain hemispheres of my brain had sustained permanent damage. I’d developed a bothersome twitch, a persistent nosebleed and a recurring desire to instigate some random act of violence.

Having said that, there is nothing immediately objectionable about Nigerian movies, especially when compared to what one is likely to find in the local multiplex in the U.S. They even have certain things going for them, the absence of Adam Sandler and Sara Jessica Parker being one.

But trapped on a bus and forced to listen to them at deafening volume very quickly negates any upside. This is mostly because the dialogue really comes in two forms: hysterical shouting and hysterical crying. Let there be no question, these characters are truly unhappy with each other.

And then, of course, there is the ritual killing and the witchcraft. You’ve not heard hysterical screaming until you’ve heard it delivered from a woman who has just been struck with a snake that turns into a bolt of lightning delivered from a priestess hovering at about 12 o’clock.

Now cheekily referred to as “Nollywood,” the industry has literally overtaken Africa over the last decade. By using English rather than local languages and by relying on aggressive marketing campaigns its reach and influence has spread rapidly.

The sheer number of titles rivals our own beloved porn industry, with some 300 producers churning out somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 films a year. Nigerian filmmaker Chico Ejiro, the creator of more than 80 films in eight years, brags he can complete production on a movie in as little as three days. Shoot high, Chico.

Given this, and that all are shot on digital video, can we be surprised at the quality? Hell, the first of the genre, released in 1992, was titled Living in Bondage.

A March 2006 article in The Guardian cites Nigeria's film industry as the third largest in the world in terms of earnings at approximately US$200 million per year. But to me, it’s what it costs unsuspecting bus passengers in quality of life that we should be measuring.

(Picture: A random Nollywood title)

Things we see out our window

Out the window, the world has been reduced to two colors: the ochre of the earth and the rich green of the trees and grasses. But there is no shortage of distractions. At the shoulder, a large semi sits awaiting assistance. Large rocks block its back tires. Beneath its axle lay its crew on flats of cardboard to escape the sun.

We pass stands selling pyramids of oranges, piles of bananas and flats of fresh eggs. Woodworker shops, for some reason often situated just beside the road, are already busily at work, examples of the raw, unfinished bed frames that seem their principal product displayed casually near the roadside.

Unfinished buildings are a regular sight. The concrete skeletons left as a home to creeping vines and the wild grasses that grow up through their vacant windows. I’m told that buildings are often the best place for people to sink their money. And as mortgages are not commonly available, being considered too great a risk, people will start building and hope that additional funds can in time be found to finish it.

The same explanation does not explain the many abandoned vehicles one encounters in Ghana. Either twisted into a mess of metal by an accident or lacking some expensive repair out of the owner’s reach, the vehicles are left to rust and decay at the side of the road or tipped headlong in the ditch.

Schools are everywhere, which means students are everywhere. They fill the open grounds beside the schools. They line the roads, traveling home. I’m proud of myself at discovering that their two-tone uniforms, brown shorts, say, matched to yellow shirts, are duplicated in the painting of the simple school house with its brown border below a band of yellow.

The terrain changes gradually as we leave the tropical palm trees and green, leafy foliage behind for thicker forest that runs all the way to the horizon. We pass through busy Techiman and then outside Kintampo the landscape changes again, this time to flatter, barer ground and dry, austere-looking shrubs and trees. This is grassland, a different kind of Africa, and the development is exciting.

As the sun falls, cooking fires pop out of the gathering dark like stars, the smoke lifting in the sky and hanging over the villages. The people themselves recede to shadow, outlines, only occasionally and temporarily illuminated by the fires.

And then, after 13 hours, four Nigerian movies and three stops for food and the bathroom (10 pesewas to pee, 20 if you have other plans), we pull in to Tamale station. A throng of taxi drivers greets us and we swing a deal of 3 cedis with one for a ride to TICCS Guesthouse, which we’ve learned of in our book.

There is some confusion at the hotel. Shawn had called earlier and been told we could have one room for three people and one for two. But now we’re told we must take two rooms for two and a third for the remaining one, driving up our costs. It’s too late to argue so we relent. Our air-con room costs us 22 cedis a night (roughly US$22).

We have a late dinner in their pleasant open-air restaurant, named the Jungle Bar, that actually offers cheeseburgers, pizza and sloppy joes on its menu. By 11 we collapse into our beds, my head still ringing some from Nigeria’s contribution to the art of film.

(Picture: The weary travelers at the Jungle Bar in Tamale: Shawn, Alice, Maria and Jeanne)

The long ride to Tamale

The bus from Accra to Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region, is scheduled to take 12 hours. Such crystalline timetables are just not how it’s done in Ghana. One would, in fact, be just as well prepared if one were to make plans based on an 8 Ball: “Signs point to yes.” Time is more elastic here, it’s relative. When someone tells you on the phone “I am coming” it is only the fool who assumes he means this instant. So we prepare for a trip of a long but uncertain duration, stuffing our bags with cookies, crackers, bread, PB&J and other provisions.

The bus, expensive by Ghanaian standards at 21 cedis (about US$21), is air conditioned and comfortable. Checking the posted numbers above the seats against those on our tickets, we find ourselves relegated to the very rear. Shawn delivers the perfectly timed bon mot, “Obama wins and we get sent to the back of the bus.”

We drive through early-morning Accra, a chaotic sprawl of a city that proceeds each day with all the grace and quietude of a one-man band jumping on a trampoline. On the radio, two men excitedly discuss the U.S. election results.

“For Africa,” the DJ says, “what it really means is, as Barack said, ‘Everything is possible.’”

The hours add one to the other and we relax into the rhythm of the road. Shawn makes conversation with a missionary who has just picked up his younger brother from the airport in the city. They are now on their way back to the village outside Tamale where the older brother has spent the past two years teaching.

She loses interest when he “unapologetically” concedes that he believes homosexuality is wrong, but still contends anyone is free to attend their church. Just keep your chaps and showtunes at home.

I learn that the younger has never actually been out of the U.S. And that seems to explain why in looking at him I’m reminded of the antelope on Animal Planet just before it’s devoured by the lion. I ask him about the recent election news.

“Obama is the Democratic Party and Bush the Republican, right?” he asks me.

This does little to convince me he is equipped to have ventured so far from the boundaries of his fundamentalist Arizona church. God’s speed, little antelope.

(Picture: A couple of yam sellers along the road to Tamale)

A very promising beginning

It did not seem an auspicious turn of events that the eve before our departure on Nov. 4 the lights went out. In Ghana, it can get hot in a hurry without a fan or air conditioning. More troubling still was the thought that some evil juju could be at work that would, once again, cast a spell of unelectability on the Democratic candidate in the U.S. presidential race.

Our only recourse was to retire to a favorite restaurant in hopes that they had power. Thankfully, The Tasty Jerk, an air conditioned oasis of spicy chicken and crisp yam chips, was showing the BBC on its large flat-screen TV. We ate, drank cold beer and watched the election results.

Having to rise at 5 a.m. for our bus to Tamale, we reluctantly turn in before the results are known. Perhaps I dreamt. Perhaps it involved unprovoked war, the suspension of habeas corpus and the mandates of the Geneva Convention. Maybe it included more than 700 signing statements and the contravention of individual liberties. But I can’t say for sure.

I awake to find Shawn standing next to the bed. “He won,” she whispers excitedly, careful not to wake the others who are still sleeping.

“He won,” I say. It comes out with all the groggy excitement of a kid saying, “Santa’s been here?”

“He won.”

In the dark of the early morning, we listen to Obama’s acceptance speech huddled around Jeanne’s cell phone. Her sister has called and has placed the phone next to her TV. Everything else is quiet and there is a sense that we have woken to the real possibility of a new world.

Not until we reach the bus station at about 6:30 a.m. do we see it for ourselves on a small TV above a pile of bags. Along with a waiting room full of Africans, we watch the president-elect take the stage. One of the bus attendants chants “O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!” his hands in the air. Another man is standing and clapping his hands above his head.

We are transfixed, at once sad to be so far from home on such a day, but glad to be in Africa on the occasion of this important step forward in the history of our own country. The reality of it makes me immediately feel closer to Shawn and those in our little band of travelers: Jeanne, Alice and Maria.

Unexpectedly, I also find that I feel closer to the Africans with whom we are sitting, and that, as a sign of hope restored, is the perfect kind of sympathy of spirit, it seems to me, with which to start our journey north.

(Picture: Waiting for the bus in Accra while watching the election results on BBC)

Off to the north

We are leaving Wednesday, Nov. 5, for points north and will not likely have access to the Internet. So like other kinds of programming when the creators get lazy, I have to direct you some of this blog’s older episodes.

The itinerary of our trip includes the following:

· A visit to the shea butter makers near Bolgatanga
· A few days in Burkina Faso to see the SIAO arts festival in Ouagadougou (pronounced “wag-a-doo-goo” and surely one of the greatest city names in the world)
· A stop at Ghana’s famed Mole National Park where elephant sitings are apparently common

There are at the moment five of us, me and four women. (I plan to one day offer a class to other men on how to work such arrangements.) We expect to be back in Cape Coast on Wed., Nov. 12, when we’ll offer up some new blog episodes.

Until then, cue the test pattern.

Calling all beautiful people

It can be a bit dispiriting actually. The Ghanaians may in fact be the most attractive people on the planet. And while I hate to admit it, this can take a toll on a short, preternaturally hairy, white-to-transparent visitor from Oregon.

The men are all lean muscle with square, angular faces that are equally at ease wearing a serious expression or a wide smile. They transmit a calm, physical confidence that were it not for their ready grin and warm manner might put one on alert. The result tends rather to just promote a sense of nagging inadequacy.

The women, well where to start with the women? They are composed of a combination of perfectly rendered individual shapes attached one to the other. To borrow an SAT form: They are to curves as bears are to shitting in the woods. Power this ridiculously complementary collection of parts with an unhurried gait, trained to straightness from years of carrying things on their head, and you may have the real reason behind the humidity in Africa.

Far from taking it for granted, Ghanaians treat beauty very seriously. Outside growing cocoa, it may be the biggest industry in the country. You can’t swing a set of hair extensions without hitting a salon or barber shop. Even in the smallest towns, there are numerous options for getting your do done.

And one is never far from the nearest seamstress. Requiring little more than a table and a sewing machine, they are as numerous as the locations of a certain purveyor of specialty coffee drinks in the United States. Global Mamas works with many of these businesses, all of which are women owned.

With so many competitors, it seems they’ve concluded that one’s sign can be the critical difference between success and obscurity. Shops devoted to beauty have the added challenge of conveying they know beautiful by displaying suitably captivating signage. The results, while not always pretty, rarely fail to be, at least, pretty interesting.

Many choose to call on divine favor for support, or at the very least advertise that God is a regular customer. God, Jesus or some other supreme power commonly figures in the name of salons and seamstresses. From His pictures, I can see He’s partial to what we’ll call the Black Crows’ look.

Not surprisingly, everyday dress is not chosen willy nilly. Apart of teenagers, who favor the same “just-slept-in-it” look so popular with their U.S. counterparts, the rest make sure that their shirts and pants are crisply ironed, their shoes nicely polished. They convey a sartorial sophistication that would seem impossible to maintain in the wilting heat. But they manage it with aplomb.

Even the children, down to the very youngest, if they are in school, wear a uniform that they are expected to keep clean and tidy. The little boys especially, in their collared dress shirts and creased shorts, look altogether like pint-sized accountants or mini UPS drivers.

The truly striking example of the nation’s relationship with beauty is unveiled on Sundays when the streets literally bloom with colorful dresses, coats and ties, and even the traditional toga-style garments still worn by some of the men. As they walk to or from church, it’s a like a bowl of fruit has just been spilled along the roadside.

God, we can conclude, digs dressing up.

Shawn's busy design life

Wieden & Kennedy has nothing on the design powerhouse Shawn has been since landing on the African continent. Much as those who know her know, simply give her a problem to solve and she’s going to spare nothing, no hemisphere of the brain, no bendable digit, no bottle of cheap local gin in finding a solution.

Global Mamas is happy to learn this as well. She brings a seriousness of purpose, mixed liberally with a love of laughter, to her projects. I’m familiar with this standard operating procedure, but even I have been impressed both by her commitment to the work and the result.

I’m only sorry that the product of her labors is not yet available for viewing by the wider world. The packaging she’s created for the new black soap and shea butter products, the latter planned to be sold in a handsome calabash, are still in the production phase. Check the Global Mamas website for their eventual introduction.

The site should also be the best place to see the annual report that she just completed. It’s an interesting read as well, providing a good picture of the important work Global Mamas is doing across Ghana for women entrepreneurs. Her current project finds her working her magic on the new wholesale catalog. I just hope the Global Mamas artisans have bags enough for the money it’s going to make them.

As for her day, they start as a early as a prizefighter’s. Up at 6:30, she is at the office by 8 a.m., often beating the paid employees. Design engines are fired by no later than 8:30. From there it’s into her designer’s fugue, with temporary stops for a cup of coffee (well, Nescafe, which can’t rightly share the name with the stuff sold at Peet’s in Portland) and a lunch of red-red (red beans and fried red plantains) or jollof rice (rice with a spicy tomato sauce).

She keeps at it, shoulder to PhotoShop, nose to InDesign, until about 4:30 or 5, when she rouses as if from a long dream and shakes her head.

I place my hand supportively on her shoulder. “You’re in Africa,” I remind her.

She smiles. “I’m in Africa.”

(Picture: The Global Mamas office in Cape Coast. See Shawn working the computer in the background.)